"Slow Down the Internet": The Recorded Order Behind Bangladesh's 2024 Shutdown

Key Takeaways

• Bangladesh prosecutors have presented audio recordings at the International Crimes Tribunal showing that Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader directed the internet shutdown during the July 2024 student uprising, with then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's approval and then-ICT Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak's execution.
• A recorded conversation from July 16, 2024, captures Quader telling Palak to "slow down the internet," with Palak responding that he would seek permission from "Netri" — a reference to Hasina.
• A BTRC document submitted to the tribunal shows that mobile operators were ordered to shut down 3G and 4G services at 59 universities from 6:00 pm on July 16, following a verbal instruction from Palak.
• The prosecution is presenting the shutdown — and the broader crackdown on protesters — as crimes against humanity, with the internet restriction forming part of a coordinated campaign that included lethal force, activist mobilization, and attempts to brand protesters as militants.

"Slow Down the Internet"

Bangladesh prosecutors have presented audio recordings at the International Crimes Tribunal-2 (a domestic tribunal for crimes against humanity) showing that the July 2024 internet shutdown during the student uprising was not an operational decision but a political one, ordered at the top of government, according to reporting by The Daily Star. 

On the third day of closing arguments in a crimes against humanity case against Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader and six other AL leaders, prosecutors played a recording of a July 16, 2024 conversation between Quader and then-ICT Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak.

In the recording, Quader tells Palak to "slow down the internet." Palak responds that he will first seek permission from "Netri" — a reference to then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The prosecution characterized this exchange as a three-level chain of command: Quader issued the instruction, Hasina approved it, Palak executed it.

The prosecution also submitted a document from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission showing that mobile operators were ordered to shut down 3G and 4G services at 59 universities from 6:00 pm on July 16, following a verbal instruction from Palak. Restrictions were also imposed on Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and other platforms.

The Shutdown as a Weapon, Not a Precaution

Internet shutdowns are consistently presented by governments as precautionary — a neutral technical measure to prevent unrest from spreading. The Bangladesh prosecution is offering a different account, grounded in the recordings: the shutdown was a deliberate instrument of a coordinated crackdown, timed to student protest activity, ordered through a chain of political command that reached the prime minister.

This framing matters beyond Bangladesh's specific legal proceedings. We've covered India's internet shutdowns in Delhi during student protests — the government shut down mobile internet during the "Chalo Sansad" march and still hasn't published the order. 

We've covered Pakistan's shutdown in Azad Jammu and Kashmir that outlasted its own stated deadline. The Bangladesh prosecution is the rare case where the mechanism of a shutdown has been exposed through recorded evidence: who picked up the phone, what was said, and who gave the final approval.

The prosecution isn't just alleging that the internet was shut down. It's alleging that the shutdown was part of a broader criminal campaign. 

The same cluster of recordings includes conversations involving then-Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and others about the use of lethal weapons against protesters, instructions to fund and deploy party activists to attack students, and discussions about branding protesters as criminals, militants, or religious extremists to justify the crackdown internationally.

A conversation between Quader and AL leaders in Chattogram, the prosecution says, was followed by the shooting deaths of three students, including Wasim Akram, by party activists on July 16.

Why This Record Matters for Internet Freedom Globally

The Bangladesh proceedings are a rare moment of accountability for an internet shutdown — and the evidentiary record being presented is unusually detailed. Sixteen audio conversations involving Hasina were recovered through the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre, with forensic authentication by CID. The chain of command from political instruction to technical execution is documented in a way that governments conducting shutdowns almost never allow to become visible.

Most internet shutdowns happen in exactly the way India's Delhi shutdown happened: a mobile network goes dark during a protest, no order is published, no one claims responsibility, and the disruption ends without any official accounting. 

The Bangladesh prosecution is showing what lies behind that kind of event when the records survive: political figures picking up phones and directing the suppression of communications as part of a coordinated crackdown on civilian protest.

The right to protest includes the ability to communicate while protesting. Cutting internet access during a demonstration isn't a neutral technical act — as the Bangladesh recordings now make clear, it's a decision made by named individuals in a specific chain of command, at a specific political moment, for specific political reasons. That's the case we've been making every time we've covered a shutdown. In Bangladesh, prosecutors are making it in court.